Amazon Explains Cloud Computing Snafu

Amazon.com Inc. on Saturday restored service to its cloud computing operations after electrical storms cut service to some customers including Netflix Inc. and Instagram. But Amazon waited until Monday to tell the world that those operations were fully back up.

In a statement Monday, the Seattle company said thunderstorms affected several of its datacenters on the East Coast on Friday night. But while “several of our datacenters had their utility power impacted,” Amazon said “in only one of them did the redundant power not operate correctly.” The power outage “ended up impacting a single digit percentage” of customers, Amazon said in the statement.

Amazon added that it restored service to most of its customers on Friday night, with the remainder restored on Saturday.

Monday’s statement makes good on Amazon’s promise over the weekend to give more details about the incident. On Saturday, an Amazon spokeswoman said of the power outage that “we have restored service to most of our impacted customers and continue to work to restore service for our remaining impacted customers. We will share more details on this event in the coming days.”

Amazon runs servers managing the Web operations of other companies, which is known as cloud computing. Netflix, Instagram and content sharing site Pinterest reported outages over the weekend.

Cloud computing is a growing business for Amazon, which has invested heavily in data centers and other infrastructure in order to offer affordable storage space for companies looking to outsource some of their infrastructure.

Google Inc. recently unveiled its own cloud computing service aimed at providing cheap computing power to a wide range of businesses.